


actions speak the words

by distractionpie



Series: EreJean Week 2020 [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Foiled Confessions, M/M, Secrets, Video
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23381941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Eren's not exactly pleased to be cleaning his and Jean's room while Jean is out on a scavenger mission, but he's even less pleased at what he finds hidden in Jean's sheets and the information it reveals.
Relationships: Jean Kirstein/Eren Yeager
Series: EreJean Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681744
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	actions speak the words

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional warning:**  
>  My take on the apocalypse prompt is a zombie based one and I wanna highlight that this fic focuses closely on related themes of infection.  
> This was written two months ago and as I reread this to edit some of the things I wrote around that theme impacted differently in light of recent events. You guys looking out for yourselves is far more important to me than hits and feedback, so if any of the possibilities of zombie-infection tropes or discussion are likely to cause you unwanted distress I’d strongly advise giving this fic a miss for the time being. If you're proceeding with this warning in mind, enjoy!

After three weeks of increasing stinkiness, first from unwashed clothes and sheets and later from the pervasive damp that had come from attempting to hand wash and dry things this deep into what feels like the longest and wettest winter of Eren’s life, Connie had finally got their laundry machine working again.

It was a temporary fix, they all knew that, they’d have to learn to do without or find another machine because this one sure as hell wan’t going to last until next year.

As the mender, Connie had first dibs but he’d completed his load in the process of testing the repair and Armin, who had high priority on everything due to his vital work, had deferred his slot to Eren on the grounds they ought to prioritise washing linens as the hardest thing to do by hand and his experiments were at too sensitive of a stage for him to stop and go strip his sheets.

Eren had offered to do the task for him, Armin’s research was more important than anything and him working on that took priority over regular chores, but Armin said he’d left his notes spread out on his bed and didn’t want to risk Eren messing up his system.

But it was an industrial scale machine and all of Eren’s bedding only half-filled the basket. He sighed. He could mix his clothes in to fill it out, he’s never been fussy but there were only so many ways to flip a pair of boxers before the grossness was undeniable, but his own stuff being clean wouldn’t be that much of a benefit if the room stayed musty from Jean’s unwashed things.

Sighing, he grabbed the first of Jean’s pillows and yanked the cover off. In theory Jean should owe him one for this, but since they hadn’t negotiated it in advance there was little chance of that working out for him.

When the pillows were done, he moved onto the top blanket. Jean kept at least two on his bed at all times, and still frequently complained their bunker was too cold, and as the temperatures have dropped Eren had started to envy him the covers but he’d also heard Jean shivering himself to sleep more than once so attempting to barter one from him was a lost cause.

Below that was a thicker duvet, double wide, that Eren wasn’t looking forward to battling the cover off, but when he lifted it, he paused. Stuffed beneath it, in the tangle of Jean’s sheets, was a video camera.

It was an old-fashioned thing with a chunky body and a viewing panel that flipped out to the side. Of course, most of what they used was vintage now; the tech companies had been churning out in the final few years hadn’t been built to last, plus the less advanced things were, the better chance that one of them could handle the repair or maintenance.

But that didn’t explain what Jean was doing with a camcorder at all.

There was nothing that went on in their makeshift bunker worth recording, and who would he show it to when they all know all of everybody else’s business already? It was amusing to think of him making some ridiculous documentary style film or maybe a video diary in which he poured out his thoughts and feelings, though surely after a while he’d start to bore even himself in repeating how cold and grumpy he was, but if he were using it regularly somebody would have caught him at it by now.

The most sensible idea Eren has is that Jean might plan to get footage of the Infected to aid in Armin’s studies, but, if it were for documenting the state of the world out there, he’d have taken it with him on his current scavenging trip.

Well, there was no way Eren would be getting anything done until he found out. Sitting on Jean’s bed, he fumbled with the camera to locate the on button, then worked his way through a menu to a folder for recorded videos.

There was only one file.

Eren pressed play.

It began with an unflattering close shot of Jean’s face, angled so the lens was pointing up his nose and half of his jaw was cut off, then shifted to some fumbling shots of the wall beside Jean’s bed before he found an angle and the video steadied to a medium closeup of Jean, square on, with a smile that was unsettlingly bright given the fact Eren could see from the time-stamp that Jean had filmed in the early hours of this morning and if there was ever a time it made less sense for him to be so cheery Eren didn’t know it.

“Hey…”

The word came out low and gravelly and Eren couldn’t help the burst of laugher that escaped him. Perhaps Jean was trying to become whatever the post-apocalyptic no-internet equivalent of a YouTube star was, complete with a fake deep voice and a disarming smile, as if he could send this out to other survivors and charm all the women who watched it.

But Jean settled against the wall and as he tipped his head back his expression settled to a far more familiar weariness.

“Oh, who am I kidding?”

Precisely what Eren wanted to know. So if Jean could hurry up and get to the point, Eren could have a laugh and return to sorting the laundry…

On the tiny screen, Jean shifted to once again look directly into the lens and continued, “There’s no point talking around it. If you’re watching this, then Mikasa came back alone and I suppose you’re distributing out my stuff. Don’t worry, this isn’t some sort of will where I tell you the best way to do that, I trust you guys, I just wanted to… explain.”

Was this an insurance policy message, recorded to document his life in case something happened? That wasn’t so weird; Eren has always believed that if there was anything worth saying, it was worth saying right away, but some people took comfort from the thought of having some sign of themselves or what they’d done which remained after death, like Armin, who was meticulous about recording his notes for posterity, just in case…

But if Jean had recorded this just in case, how could he be sure he was with Mikasa? And why was it tucked under his blanket? Surely he wasn’t recording a new message before every supply run? Sure, Jean was negative, but that level of morbidness seemed too far even for him.

On screen, Jean sighed, opening the top buttons of his shirt. “Though I suppose there’s not much to say,” he muttered, pushing the garment down off his shoulder to reveal a covering of bruises and, in the centre, a long gouge, cutting around his arm to end below his collarbone, fresh enough that it looked like it might start bleeding at the slightest pressure. The small screen wasn’t great quality but the injury didn’t look deep. Of course, the depth of the wound wasn’t important, not when it came to the risk of Infection. In the early days they’d used the word Zombie but a lot of people had frowned on that, first because it was insensitive and later because it mislead people into thinking they were safe as long as they weren’t bitten — so many of the early groups of survivors had fallen because their members thought nothing of scrape or scratch.

“I found it while I was showering last night,” Jean confessed, prodding at the torn flesh. “And I don’t know how it happened. Which is moronic, because it stings like a bitch now, but adrenaline, huh?”

Last night. After they’d both returned from a perimeter check that had ended in a close brush with a pack of a dozen Infected, but from which they’d got away from by the skin of their teeth.

Or so Eren had thought.

If this was it looked to be, he ought to call the others over, they should know that Jean has been hiding a wound and that he’s gone outside like this. They should be making plans to send another team out to chase down him and Mikasa, bring them back before Jean’s stupid decision had any real consequences, but Eren was locked in place as Jean shook his head. “Since I don’t know… Part of me wants to ignore it because it could be nothing,” he admitted. “It doesn’t even look like the sort of injury most of the Infected have. But I guess that’s pretty selfish, huh?”

Selfish? Selfish?! Eren felt his whole body tensing. Hoping for the best wasn’t selfish, what was selfish was Jean keeping this situation secret, instead of telling Eren that their patrol had gone more wrong than they’d thought. For fuck’s sake, even not addressing the issue of Infection, he shouldn’t have left a cut like that go untreated.

On camera Jean echoed Eren’s feelings, muttering “Fuck…” as he rubbed his hands over his face, followed by something that the microphone didn’t catch, then, “I know we all discussed this,” and for a moment Eren didn’t recall what he was talking about, but, “And I argued hard that if somebody got Infected we would have to take drastic measures. But truth be told, if it actually was one of you guys, I’m not sure I could do it.”

Drastic measures. It came back in a sickening flash, the talk that had quickly turned into a screaming match as Jean had insisted on talking about what to do if one of their group got Infected and Eren had tried to point out that they should just not do that but everybody else had agreed a plan was needed. They’d talked about containment and control but Jean had pressed on and insisted that all Infected should be treated the same way, and hadn’t they all agreed when talking about the ones outside that the only way to deal with them was to kill?

It had enraged Eren when he proposed it, and the anger only deepened as Jean looked right into the camera and said, “It’s necessary, but what a headfuck, right? As if the world hasn’t gone to shit enough already,” acknowledging what a terrible thing his plan is and holding to it anyway like the worst sort of foolish, arrogant asshole.

There was an unsteadiness to the video now, screen juddering and jittering like the lens had come loose mid-recording, but, when Eren set it down to check, there was nothing wrong with the device, the video steadied out, the shake only resuming when he lifted the camera back up with trembling hands.

Taking a deep breath, he set the camera on his knees to steady it and kept watching.

“I fucked up and I might need to be put down,” Jean remarked, with a derisive scoff that made Eren think it was no coincidence that he’d chosen a phrase better applied to an animal, as distancing as his flat tone is, as if pushing down his emotions about the situation might make it all go away. “And if I hate the thought of having to do it, and I don’t even have your idiot optimism, it would be pretty shitty of me to put that on you. And honestly, I don’t want to look into any of your eyes and know you’re thinking about having to kill me.”

As if any of them would. Sure, Jean might have talked some of them around to his brutal measures when dealing in abstracts, but there wasn’t one person who could look at Jean, not even a version of Jean twisted with the madness and all-consuming hunger of the Infected and certainly not with the serious rueful expression he was wearing in the video, and go through with something so awful.

But Jean had thought of that. “That’s why I asked Mikasa to be the one to come on a supply run with me, while I wait and see how this plays out. Maybe it’ll be fine, but if I start to lose it out there, if I get dangerous, then she’s the only one of you I know won’t hesitate to do what’s necessary, and I trust that she’ll be able to get back on her own if it comes to that. Sorry Mikasa.”

He’s right. Mikasa might not be fond of the idea of killing an Infected friend, but if they were in the field without the resources of the bunker and Jean was already lost to the disease, she’d do what she had to — for both of their sakes. Jean had chosen well in planning this excursion and Eren thought he might hate him for it.

For a few moments there was quiet and Eren wondered if the video has ended and just stopped on a still frame but then Jean murmured, “I feel like I’m burning up,” with an air of painful confession, before his face twisted back into a stubborn scowl as he added, “But I always did feel fucking flushed when I worried, so who the fuck knows.”

It has been hard to figure out the symptoms of early Infection, those who were turning hardly submitted themselves for scientific study, but Eren didn’t remember any mentions of fever back in the early days of the disease. But even if Jean wasn’t Infected, there was always the risk of more mundane illnesses from leaving a wound like his untreated. Showering was no substitute for sterilising and covering, there were plenty of diseases that could be deadly even if they didn’t present the same danger to others that an Infection would.

“Urgh, I only meant to explain what happened and now I’m going on and on,” Jean grumbled. “Hopefully, you’ll never get to see this, I’ll record over it when I get back. If you have found it, then I guess I’ve been dead for a while but hey, congratulations on finally getting Eren to clean our room.”

Of all the—?! As if that mattered when he might be going off to die? And as if Jean weren’t just as responsible for the mess as him!

“Or maybe your some stranger who found this, long after we’ve… my friends have all moved on, and you’re wondering who the fuck I am, in which case, what the fuck kind of weirdo are you, I know I’m gonna be stashing this under plenty of junk so why were you going through all that shit to find it?”

Huh. It hadn’t been nearly that well hidden, just stuffed among his sheets. Had something gone wrong with Jean’s plans? He’d definitely left with Mikasa, but even if he couldn’t have foreseen Connie fixing the machine and Eren deciding to bundle both their laundry, his blankets were no pile of junk. But Eren’s speculations could only last the duration of Jean’s bitter laugh before there was more to listen to.

“Oh great, I’m talking to imaginary hypothetical future people. Well, if I am Infected Armin can add general non-cannibalistic insanity to his fun list of possible symptoms. Whatever, I can say anything I want now; I mean, hey, I’m not the one who’ll have to live with the consequences.”

Death was nothing to be glib about but it was better than despondency and there was a genuine smirk playing at the corner of Jean’s mouth as he continued, “God, I could tell you all so much shit. Like how it was me who finished the last of the candy from our last big supermarket scavenge, and I got away with it because everybody assumed it was Sasha exactly like I expected you too. Or that I knew Connie was lying about having his driver’s licence when we found that still working car, but I thought it would be funny for everyone to get the shit scared out of them in a non-horrifying way for a change. Fuck, I could even—”

There was a noise off camera, loud enough to hear but not for Eren to recognise and Jean faltered, looking to the side with a sombre expression that was nevertheless softer than anything Eren was used to seeing from Jean. What was he looking at? They shared a room and a quick glance at the narrow space between their spartan bunks doesn’t reveal what might merit such a look of aching tenderness.

“Eren…”

Eren startled.

“Guess I’m lucky you’re a deep sleeper huh, or I couldn’t have recorded any of this.”

Oh. Of course. Eren had come in from their patrol and near passed out from exhaustion, for Jean to make this in their room before leaving this morning he must have done it while Eren was sleeping mere feet away. Fuck. It’s not lucky at all that Eren hadn’t woken at his words, perhaps if he had he might have put a stop to this, and the creeping sense of a near miss only worsens as Jean turns to address the Eren off camera.

“I know you still believe a cure is possible, but even you’ll have to understand that Armin can’t get from vague theory to a working drug within the time it would take for the Infection to set in. You’re going to be mad I didn’t just say what’s happening and face it head on; but you always were braver. Me, I’d rather remember you scowling because I’m an asshole than pitying me because I’m gonna die or turn into a monster.”

Anger had barely touched him, too caught up in the moment of the video, but now Jean had raised the subject — this was a dick move. Did Jean think he was doing them any favours, covering up a possible Infection and letting it play out without even trying to help himself? They didn’t have a cure yet, but Armin was working on it. Out there, if he turned, Mikasa would have to kill him like Jean has always insisted they should do to any Infected; if he’d stayed they would have initiated the counter proposal he’d shot down when they’d first discussed the possibility and found a way to contain him until there was a solution. Why now had Jean chosen to be obstinate about something other than self-preservation? And why now, when addressing an Eren sleeping too deeply to argue sense into him, had Jean lapsed into talking like he was Infected for sure?

“God, you look so peaceful when you’re sleeping, it’s almost like you’re a different guy altogether, but if this might be my last chance to say it…”

The camera is drifting, posterity and explanations forgotten as Jean twists fully towards Eren’s unseen form.

“You drive me nuts, Eren, and you know it, but you don’t get it,” he complained. “Sometimes I look at you and I just wanna tear my fucking hair out, and then other times…”

Jean broke off with a low groan, far more pained than Eren would expect given his wound was shallow and talking wouldn’t aggravate it.

“God, how much of a coward am I, that I can’t say it even when you’re sleeping and I might never be coming back! It’s not like it’s complicated, I—”

There was a beep, the tone too close and feedback tainted in a way that gave its source away as the camera at the time of the recording, and Jean jolted where he sat, looking back into the lens and seeming to remember his original intent.

“Fuck, this is stupid,” and Jean’s voice cracked on the final word. “If I’m going to delete it, then making this is pointless; and if I’m dead then my feelings won’t matter anymore.”

No! How could it mean so much to Jean that he wanted it known after his death, but not have woken Eren to say so? To admit that if he returned he would leave it weighing on him in secret rather than say what he was struggling with? There were too few ways that sentence could have ended, but instead of confirming it, the view swung wildly away from Jean, giving Eren a blurry glimpse of the room before settling on the ceiling.

“I should just erase—”

“Jean? Are you ready to go?”

It’s Mikasa’s voice, at a distance. Has Jean cut his explanation so close? Though really, only a few lines of that video were about the idiotic decision he’d made, before he’d lapsed into something so raw that Eren can barely process it.

“Yeah, yeah, hang on one second.”

“Jean,” Mikasa’s voice was stern and frustrated. “This was your idea. If we’re going to make the trip at this time of year, when they days are so short, we need to leave at first light or we’ll be caught out after nightfall.”

“I know, I know, I just—”

And the video ended.

This time there was no doubt, the screen cutting to black for a moment before the menu options reappeared.

The camera fell from his hands.

Eren stood.

He pushed the laundry basket aside.

He crossed the tiny room and walked through the door.

The length of the hallway extended out in front of him.

Every step seemed to take an eon, but finally he reached the lab.

“Armin! When are Jean and Mikasa due back?”

“Huh?” Armin glanced up at him and then over to the clock. “Actually, about half an hour ago. Odd, it was routine scavenging and they’re both usually so efficient about that. Did you need something from one of them?”

Did he… did he…? His hands were shaking again. The lab benches were piled high, Armin’s experiments were going well; but not well enough for Jean to have stayed. Not for him to have given them, given himself a chance.

Instead he’d left without even talking to them. Without an explanation, because he’d clearly intended to wipe that video, not leave it for Eren to find. Without even saying…

“Eren…? Is something wrong?”

**Author's Note:**

> **[Plus an amazing bonus scene.](https://bonkochammy.tumblr.com/post/614018414295580672/i-needed-to-add-this-to-distractionpie-s-recent) **
> 
> Title from "In Between" by Linkin Park.
> 
> This was an interesting technical experience to write. Normally it’s dialogue which comes best to me, so writing a fic almost entirely absent of it was a weird thing to try. Jean’s video was written in one file to make sure that flowed decently as a monologue and then I went back and filled in the parts of Eren watching and reacting which definitely challenged the way I’d usually approach a piece, I’m glad I did it though.


End file.
